Of Monsters and Princesses
by Ultimate Queen of Cliffies
Summary: "Oh, that's perfect!" Nessa cried. "You can play the part of the handsome prince coming to rescue me, the beautiful princess! And Fabala, you can be the monster!" Ten-year-old Elphaba didn't make herself any illusions. She'd never get to be the princess. One-shot, sort-of-Fiyeraba-ish. A birthday present for Humole. Winner 1st place Best Drabble/One-shot in the 2015 Greg Awards.


**This is a little cute and fluffy one-shot I managed to cook up especially for Humberto's birthday today - so Humbie, this is for you! :D Happy birthday!**

* * *

 **Of Monsters and Princesses**

"Fabala?" Little Nessarose tugged at the skirt of her sister's dress. "Fabala, do you want to play?"

Elphaba, who was sitting on the swing in the garden reading a book, shushed her sister and Nessa frowned. She tugged at Elphaba's skirt again, but the green girl merely swung a bit back and forth, still focused on her book and apparently hardly even noticing Nessa. The younger girl glanced at her father once, who was sitting on the wooden bench on the porch with a cup of coffee and his newspaper and didn't seem to be aware what was going on, either.

"Fabala!" Nessarose said more loudly. "I want to play. Please?" She stretched the word, so that it sounded like " _Pleeeeaaaase?_ ", and made big eyes at the older girl.

Elphaba, however, still didn't look up. "Hush, Nessa, I want to finish this chapter first. We'll play later."

"But I want to play _now_." Nessa pouted and, when the green girl didn't respond, turned to her father. "Daddy, Fabala won't play with me!"

Frexspar looked up from his newspaper and glared at Elphaba over it. She didn't look up and he said sharply, "Elphaba."

She glanced up and met his stern gaze.

"Don't be so selfish and play with your sister," he ordered with a frown.

She heaved a small sigh before nodding and putting her book away. "Sure, Nessie. Let's go play."

Nessa squealed and Elphaba pushed the wheelchair out of the back garden and out to the front of the house, which she knew was the girl's favourite place to play. There were trees, there was a pond nearby, and there were bushes and high grass for hiding. Not that Nessarose was very adept at hiding, what with her chair and all, but she liked doing so nonetheless.

"I am a princess," Nessa decided, straightening in her chair and tossing her hair over one shoulder, "and I have been kidnapped and hidden away by a bad guy, and you're the prince and you have to come look for me. Okay? Close your eyes – I'm going to hide now and you can't know where. You have to count to fifty until you can look for me, okay?"

"Okay," said Elphaba obediently, putting her hands in front of her eyes and starting to count. "One, two, three..."

She could hear Nessa moving her chair away as she kept on counting. When she finally said, "Fifty!", and turned around, however, she found herself staring straight at a blond boy a few years older than she was, watching her curiously.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Playing," said Elphaba curtly.

He paused. "Is that why you're green?"

She gave an irritable sigh. "No, I didn't paint myself green to play," she said, her voice betraying her impatience. She'd heard this question – and many others like it – far too many times already. "And the answer to every other question you were about to ask is "no", too," she added when she saw him open his mouth to say something else, "unless you were about to ask if I've been green my entire life, in which case the answer is "yes"."

"Oh." He cocked his head, studying her in interest. "Why?"

She shrugged. "No-one knows. I was just born this way."

"Cool." He gave her a lopsided grin, revealing some missing teeth in the back. "I like green. It's not as awesome as blue, but it's still pretty awesome."

She gave him an incredulous look, but he just looked around. "So, were you playing hide and seek? Because you were counting? Can I help look?"

Elphaba shook her head no, even though she was still a little dumb-founded. No-one had ever thought her skin was awesome before – not in a good way, anyway. "I'm playing with my sister. She's a princess who's been hidden by a villain and I'm supposed to find and rescue her."

The boy looked around and then pointed his finger. "I see you, green girl's sister!" he called. "You're behind that tree!" He looked immensely proud of himself.

Elphaba rolled her eyes. "That's not how it works, you dumbass," she said, even as Nessa came wheeling towards them.

"Who is this, Fabala?" she asked, pouting. "I had such a good hiding spot!"

"I could still see your chair," the boy told her and Elphaba whacked him on the back of the head. "Ow! What was that for?!"

She merely glared at him and then looked at Nessa, who looked a little sad at the mention of her chair. She always hated the thing, even at the best of times, but even more so when it prevented her from doing something normal – like hiding without being spotted by everyone.

The boy seemed to get it, because he looked suitably abashed. "Sorry. Hey, can I play with you guys?"

Elphaba eyed him up and down suspiciously. "We don't even know your name," she pointed out. "And what are you doing here, anyway?"

He cracked another grin. "I'm Fiyero. I'm a prince," he said proudly and Nessa perked up.

"Oh, that's perfect!" she cried out, clapping her hands in excitement. "You can play the part of the handsome prince coming to rescue me, the beautiful princess! And Fabala, you can be the monster keeping me captive!"

The green girl raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so just because I'm green, I'm the monster now?" she asked, careful to keep her voice light so as not to betray to Nessa or this strange boy how much she hated these little things that just seemed to prove over and over again that she was not normal and that she was worth less than other people.

"Yes." Nessarose nodded vigorously. "Daddy always says you're a monster, too, so it fits, doesn't it?"

Despite trying her hardest to not show how much that comment stung, Elphaba physically winced a little at the words coming from her little sister's mouth. She knew Nessa's didn't mean it in a nasty way. She also knew it was true. That didn't mean it didn't hurt, though.

"This is Elphaba," Nessa chattered on, pointing at her sister, "and I'm Nessarose, but you can call me Nessa if you want to. We're the daughters of the governor of Munchkinland," she added proudly.

Elphaba noticed that Fiyero was staring at her, but she ignored him. He was probably just studying her skin, anyway. "So why are you here?" she asked again, sounding a little gruff even though she didn't really mean to.

"My mum and dad are here for some kind of business meeting," he said, "and I was bored, so they sent me outside to play with other kids. And now I found other kids, so let's play."

"Sure." Elphaba sighed. "We'll have to go home soon, though. I still have to repair a tear in Nessa's dress and then help her get ready for dinner, since she insists on wearing that particular dress tonight."

"It's my favourite," said Nessa stubbornly. "You have to fix it."

"I will, Nessie. I promised, didn't I?"

Fiyero, meanwhile, was staring again. "You sew?"

"What's so strange about that?" Elphaba asked defensively.

The prince shook his head. "Don't you have servants for that?" he asked. "If you're the daughters of the governor? Why do you have to do those things? You're way too young to do them, anyway."

Elphaba scoffed. "I'm _ten_. I learned to sew and clean _ages_ ago, and now I'm learning how to cook, too. Father doesn't like having too many strangers around the house, so I have to do the household when I'm older in addition to taking care of Nessa."

Now he was gaping and she crossed her arms and scowled at him. " _What_?!"

"That's stupid," he said, but she shrugged.

"She's really good at it," Nessa added, apparently also not understanding why this boy seemed to find her sister's chores so strange. "Don't you have to do chores?"

"Yes, _chores_ ," he stressed. "I have to set the table sometimes or clean my room. But that's it."

"I can't do chores," Nessa told him. "Because I can't stand or walk."

A stab of guilt shot through Elphaba and she said with an air of finality, "So I do them for both of us. It's not a big deal."

"Can we play now?" Nessa whined.

"Okay," Elphaba agreed, but Fiyero seemed bothered by something as Nessa turned around and started wheeling herself away, calling over her shoulder, "I'll just go over there, that's where the monster lives!".

He nudged the green girl's arm. "Elphaba?"

"What?"

He hesitated, then asked, "Does your father really call you a monster?"

Her face hardened – this was none of his business. "What if he does?"

"Well… it's not right," he said, frowning. "Fathers should be nice to their children. I mean, my dad gets angry sometimes, of course, but he'd never call me a monster."

"He would if you'd –" She cut herself off, biting her tongue hard. She had been about to say "if you'd killed your mother and crippled your sister" – she'd almost blurted it out – but she couldn't say it. She'd never said it to anyone and she didn't even know this boy. "Never mind. Let's just say I deserve it."

"Why would you think that?" Fiyero asked incredulously and she snorted.

"I'm green, remember?" she said, heaving a sigh and turned around to walk away. "I'll go to Nessa now, to play the monster. You wait here and –"

"No."

She stopped dead in her tracks and spun around. "Excuse me?"

"I said no," he said. "Do you always do what Nessa wants?"

She bristled. "She's my little sister and she's in a wheelchair. Her life is hard enough as it is without me making it any worse. If she wants me to be the monster, I'll be the monster."

"Nessa?" Fiyero called. "Would you come back here?"

"What are you doing?" Elphaba hissed even as Nessarose came wheeling back.

"What?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"

Fiyero shook his head. "No," he said. "But I was thinking maybe we can do it a little differently." He crouched in front of Nessa's chair. "How about you let Elphaba be the princess this time?"

Nessa looked at him, eyes wide – though not quite as wide as her sister's. "But… but Fabala is green!" she protested. "She can't be a princess!"

"Why can't princesses be green?" Fiyero asked. "Do you think your sister is ugly?"

"No," Nessa admitted, "but –"

"Then why wouldn't she be a princess?"

Nessarose thought about that for a moment and sighed. "I guess she can be the princess," she conceded. "But I don't want to be the monster."

"You don't have to be," Fiyero assured her. "How about you're the prince's younger sister who helps him look for the princess?"

The wheelchair-bound girl gave that some thought, too, and then nodded. "Okay."

Fiyero grinned and straightened, turning to Elphaba. "I guess you should go and hide, then, princess."

She grabbed his arm. "What in Oz do you think you're doing?" she demanded, although her tone lacked the bite she intended to put in it.

"What?" he asked. "Nessa is okay with it, she just said so, so you can be the princess."

"But _why_?" she pressed. "What do you care?"

His grin faded and he suddenly looked serious. "It's something my mum taught me," he said. "I never really got it, but I guess it makes sense now. She always says to me that when I get older and meet more girls, I have to respect them, listen to them, and be kind to them," he summed up, clearly having memorised this, "because every girl deserves to be treated like a princess sometimes." He grinned another gap-toothed grin. "So now you get to be the princess."

She could only stare at him for a long while, so long that he started to get uncomfortable. "Would you go hide now?"

She blinked. "Oh… right." She glanced at Nessa once and then ran off to find a hiding place.

That night, when she crawled into her bed once her chores were done, she lay awake and thought about the strange things that had happened that day. She didn't think she would ever see Fiyero again; he'd told her he would travel back home with his parents that same night and it was not like her father would ever let her anywhere near a prince if he could help it. Despite that, though, she already knew that she would never forget this strange boy, this prince from some place far away. She would never forget him because he was the first, and so far the only, person in her life who had ever made her feel like a princess.


End file.
